The right place if you don't care about your career and your well-being... - Software Developer Fidessa Employee Review

It used to be a rather nice place to work at, although a bit stuck to the past with outdated technology and very few career prospects. However, for the first year or so, while someone was learning the job, there used to be interesting and challenging things to work on and educate themselves on software development life cycle. Nevertheless, Fidessa had managed to establish a very strong presence in the market. As a minus I'd count that it used to be fairly relaxed (perhaps too lax sometimes) with many people too scared for a change and with their feet comfortably stuck under their desks. The main problem though, from a career perspective, used to be that whatever you learned at Fidessa was made just for Fidessa, no technology skills would be transferable when you moved jobs. The problems multiplied by tenfold since the ION takeover. Bought by one of the worst names in the sector, Fidessa started sinking faster than the Titanic. It was obvious from day one that the senior management were only interested in the 1.5 billion pounds selling price, they didn't bother about the fate of the company and the staff (with many of them having offered dedicated services for more than 20 years). They left them all at the mercy of ION. Within days, the work culture turned toxic, pre-takeover promises by ION were not kept, massive exit waves and redundancies started. A company that used to float on the stock exchange and be fairly transparent, was suddenly turned into a company where senior management makes decisions behind closed doors and doesn't care about anyone or anything. Fidessa was sold to ION Group to be killed and rot. Since then, the company struggles by lack of talent (who would go work there...?), massive debts, falling business. People with self-respect and ambitions have left. People privileged by the new status-quo or too scared to move on are still there. The latter should deserve no sympathy whatever trick ION plays on them, as they now know who they are dealing with...